EP 07 · The Physical Plant·INVESTIGATE · v0.2 · 3 June 2026
One data centercan equalan entireairport.
Hartsfield-Jackson — the busiest airport on Earth — runs on roughly 150 megawatts. A single hyperscale data center can need 100–250 MW. Georgia is on track for forty of them by 2030. Almost nobody is monitoring it. Almost nobody is voting on it. And the largest tenants are the apps in your pocket.
You are reading EP 07 · The Physical Plant.
Part of Machine-Readable — Season II's twelve-part investigation.
Reads cleanly after S1·07 Data Center Bill and S1·06 Vogtle Bill. Bridges to EP 08 The Class Engine.
That last bar is ≈55× the airport. It is also ≈18× the entire residential demand of the City of Atlanta at peak summer. Nothing about the buildings themselves tells you they are there.
⟶THE FOOTPRINT THAT DOESN'T MATCH THE BILL
Same megawatts. 1/100th the land.
Draft architectural plan views of three facilities — the airport, one hyperscale data center, and Georgia's projected 2030 cluster — drawn at the same pixel scale to land the question their size hides: how much grid does a building this small actually pull?
Land footprint
4,700acres
Continuous load
≈150MW
⟶ Power density
0.032MW / acre
spread across 7.3 sq miles · 5 runways · 7 concourses
A facility the size of a Costco can match a 4,700-acre airport in continuous electricity demand. Georgia is on track for forty of them, fitting inside half the airport's land while drawing 55× its power.
I.· THE SCALE · WHAT A MEGAWATT LOOKS LIKE
The most energy-hungry tenant Georgia ever attracted is the one nobody voted for.
The unit of measure that matters here is the megawatt. One megawatt powers about 750 to 1,000 American homes. Hartsfield-Jackson is one of the largest single-meter loads in the Southeast. A single hyperscale facility can match it. Georgia Power's 2024 IRP says forty equivalents are coming.
i.
A megawatt is roughly 750–1,000 American homes.
Continuous, year-round. The continuous demand makes data centers behave more like factories than like office buildings, and grid planners price them accordingly.
Across 4,700 acres, five runways, 192 gates, 63,000 on-site workers, and the world's largest single passenger throughput. The airport's electricity bill is one of Georgia Power's largest single-customer accounts.
A decade ago, 30 MW was a large data-center campus. AI-training racks at 40–100 kW each have pushed individual campus loads past 200 MW. Same building footprint — vastly more compute density.
Georgia's projected 2030 data-center load is ~8,200 MW.
Roughly 55 airports. Roughly 18 City-of-Atlanta-equivalents. Roughly the entire current peak demand of South Carolina. That number is the centerpiece of Georgia Power's 2024 IRP — the document justifying the next generation buildout.
adds more electricity demand than the entire country of France
2023 · DOE
4.4%
US national electricity share from data centers
2028 · DOE projected
12%
US share — would rank as the #3 grid customer category
II.· THE TENANTS · WHO IS ACTUALLY USING THIS
It is mostly the apps in your pocket.
Roughly 80% of all internet traffic is now video. Netflix alone is consistently ~15% of global downstream. Add YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, Disney+, gaming, and cloud storage and you have accounted for most of what's running. AI is the exponential new overlay.
ATL · INTERNET DEPARTURES · LIVE
UPDATED --:--:-- ET
Flight · Tenant
Destination · Hyperscaler
Gate
Status
Share
The Hollywood studios that produced your favorite show now spend more on cloud-compute infrastructure than on physical sound stages. The largest single tenant of Georgia's data-center expansion isn't a defense contractor or a bank. It is entertainment — and the AI layer that is growing on top of it.
III.· WHO'S WATCHING · THE REGULATORY VOID
Six other jurisdictions have caps, codes, or moratoriums. The United States has none.
Singapore stopped permits for three years over energy concerns. Ireland's Dublin region has refused new grid connections since 2022. China caps Power Usage Effectiveness at 1.3. The EU just made facility-level reporting mandatory. The United States has no national energy-efficiency standard for data centers at all.
United States
Federal void · patchwork at state level
No national standard
No federal energy-efficiency standard. No mandatory PUE reporting. No siting moratorium authority. EPA Energy Star for data centers is voluntary. FERC governs interstate transmission but not the buildings themselves. State PUCs handle rate cases — but not facility-level disclosure. The most heavily concentrated capacity on Earth is also the least regulated.
DOE · EPA · FERC · NARUC 2024
European Union
Energy Efficiency Directive · EU 2023/1791
Mandatory reporting
Facilities >500 kW must report energy consumption, PUE, water use, and renewable share annually to the EU Commission and member states. Data is public. EU Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency in place since 2008. Annex lists 175 measurable best practices.
EUR-Lex · Directive 2023/1791
Singapore
Three-year moratorium · 2019–2022
Hard pause
Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority froze all new data-center permits for three years over land, power, and water constraints. When permits reopened in 2022, they came with strict PUE caps and a competitive allocation process. Hyperscalers had to bid for slots.
IMDA · EDB · 2022 framework
China
PUE 1.3 cap · tier-1 cities
Hard efficiency cap
National framework requires PUE ≤ 1.3 for new builds in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen. National "East Data, West Compute" plan steers data centers toward regions with surplus renewable generation. Mandatory annual disclosure of energy, water, and carbon metrics.
NDRC · MIIT 2021–2023
Ireland
Dublin connection freeze · 2022 →
No new grid connections
EirGrid has refused new Dublin-region data-center grid connections since 2022 after data centers exceeded 20% of national electricity demand. Made formal policy 2024. Ireland is the warning case the US is most often compared to in industry analyses.
EirGrid · CRU 2022 policy
Netherlands
Amsterdam regional pause · 2019 →
Selective pause
Amsterdam metropolitan region paused new hyperscale data centers in 2019. National-level 2022 spatial planning rule restricts hyperscale data centers to two designated areas. Land-use restriction as climate policy — a tool not readily available in the US federal system.
VROM · gemeente Amsterdam
THE VOID· The United States hosts roughly 40% of global hyperscale capacity. It has the largest concentration. The most growth. The most water and grid stress. And the only major jurisdiction without facility-level disclosure rules. The reason isn't an oversight. There is no federal authority that has clear standing to regulate the buildings themselves — energy code is state, land use is local, FERC governs the wires not the racks. The fragmentation is the regulatory void.
IV.· THE OPPOSITION · WHAT IS BEING FOUGHT, BY WHOM, AND FOR HOW MUCH
An asymmetry of money meeting an asymmetry of attention.
There IS opposition — in courts, on ballots, at zoning hearings, in legislative committees. The pattern that recurs across states is the gap between industry spending and opposition spending, and the gap between which side commands which timescales.
Direct lobbying + state-level PAC giving + sponsored research + chamber/trade-group giving across all major host states. Hyperscaler-affiliated and REIT-affiliated entities combined. Sources: OpenSecrets · NIMSP · state-level lobbying disclosures.
Opposition · estimated$14M
Foundation grants to opposition groups + community legal-defense funds + foundation-funded research at think tanks. Tracked groups include Frontier Group, Data Center Watch, Sustainable Loudoun, Friends of the Rural Crescent, Sierra Club state chapters. Sources: foundation 990s · group annual reports.
The ratio is approximately 20 to 1. That ratio compounds annually. The opposition is organized — but it is fighting on the industry's chosen ground (rate cases, zoning hearings, committee votes), not on the public's natural attention ground (Atlanta-airport comparisons, monthly bills, water bills).
Prince William County · VA
Board public-interest finding — 2024
After multi-year organizing, the Board of Supervisors voted to formally find continued unrestrained data-center expansion is not in the public interest. Comprehensive Plan amendment now restricts data centers in the Rural Crescent. First US county-level binding finding of its kind.
Years of organizing6+ years
Public hearings~40
OutcomeComp Plan amended
Win · partial
Loudoun County · VA
PW Digital Gateway · contested rezoning
Proposed 2,100-acre data-center zone. Approved 2023 by 5-3 board vote after intense organizing on both sides. Active litigation and reform pressure ongoing. Loudoun hosts ~25% of global internet traffic by some estimates — the world's largest concentration. Opposition is institutionalized through Save Rural Loudoun and partner groups. ↺ Echo · EP 05 Replayable City The same Loudoun-corridor fiber that hosts the streaming load also carries the commercial-data infrastructure documented there.
Pending lawsuits3+
Public comments10,000+
StatusApproved · contested
Active · contested
Umatilla County · OR
Google water-rights dispute
Google's data centers in The Dalles reportedly consume ~25% of city water. Years-long FOIA fight over how much. The Oregonian sued — won. Water use disclosed: 355M gallons in 2021. Now the subject of state-level water-rights legislation. Template for water-disclosure organizing in other states.
FOIA fight2+ years
Disclosed gallons/yr355M
Legislative statusHB 2025-3324 active
Active · disclosure pressure
Maricopa County · AZ
Buckeye water-rights challenge
Coalition challenged Microsoft and Meta facility water allocations in 2023. Arizona Department of Water Resources upheld original permits. State legislature reform agenda died in committee. Buckeye water situation actively deteriorating; coalition reorganizing for the 2026 session.
Permits challenged3 facilities
OutcomeUpheld 2-1
Reform billDied in committee
Loss · reorganizing
Quincy · WA
Water-disclosure ordinance
Among the earliest US hyperscale clusters (Microsoft, Yahoo, Sabey since 2007). Local organizing produced one of the country's first water-disclosure requirements for data centers in 2024. Limited but real. Other Pacific Northwest counties studying as template.
Years of fight10+
Disclosure requiredAnnual · public
Replication interestOR · CA · NV
Win · template
Georgia · statewide
Three-piece reform agenda · all sessions
Hyperscale tariff (would carve data centers into their own rate class), HB 1192 sunset (would end the 2008 sales-tax exemption), per-facility disclosure (would require annual reporting of MW, gallons, jobs). All three introduced in 2023, 2024, 2025. All three died in committee each session. Re-organizing for 2026 with a broader coalition.
Bills filed9 across 3 years
Reached floor vote0
2026 reintroductionPlanned
Loss · structural blocker
V.· THE INVISIBLE TAX · WHAT YOUR DAILY USE COSTS
Your refrigerator and your Netflix are now in the same energy class.
The grid bill arrives every month. The data-center bill arrives every minute, attached to every stream, every backup, every AI query. It is not on your statement. It does not exist as a number you can see. But it is the largest single category of consumer-side energy growth in 2024. ↺ Echo · EP 02 The Feed Engine Every signal counted there is a megawatt counted here.
i.
One Google search
0.3
watt-hours
Roughly equivalent to running a 10W LED bulb for 2 minutes. ~8.5 billion Google searches per day.
ii.
One ChatGPT query
~3
watt-hours
≈10× a Google search. AI image generation is ~2.9 Wh per image — roughly the same as a query.
iii.
One hour Netflix HD
~0.8
kilowatt-hours (kWh)
Roughly equivalent to running a 100W bulb for 8 hours. 4K streaming roughly doubles this.
iv.
Training GPT-4
~50
gigawatt-hours (GWh)
Roughly the annual electricity use of ~4,800 American homes, for a single model training run. New models train regularly.
⟶ Where the kWh actually go · average US household, modeled 2025
Streaming and AI now sit alongside the refrigerator and the dishwasher in your monthly bill — most people don't see it because the energy is consumed at the data center, not at home.
HVAC / heating
~31%
Water heating
~14%
Streaming + cloud (off-grid)
~12%
Refrigeration
~10%
Lighting + appliances
~9%
AI queries (off-grid)
~4% ↗ doubling
Note · "Off-grid" categories represent energy consumed at data centers on your behalf, modeled per household. Users pay for these indirectly through subscription fees, retail mark-ups, and — increasingly — through rate-base allocations like the ones documented in S1·07 The Data Center Bill. Chart is a modeled estimate, not a meter reading.
VI.· THE STAKES · WHY THE WINDOW IS NOW
The decisions that lock the buildout in for a generation are being made right now, at scales most readers don't watch.
Three decision windows are open. Each closes in less than two years. Each is being made in venues with low public attention — by design.
Window 1 · 2026 GA session
HB 1192 sunset
If reform passes in 2026, the sales-tax exemption that brought hyperscalers to Georgia ends in 2030. If it dies again, the exemption auto-renews and the same architecture compounds for another 8 years.
Window 2 · 2026 GA PSC elections
Hyperscale tariff authority
Two PSC seats up. Composition determines whether commercial customers can be carved into their own rate class. Low-turnout runoffs historically decide outcome.
Window 3 · 2027 IRP filing
Next reactor cycle
Georgia Power's next IRP is expected to propose new generation to serve AI demand. If approved on current rate-base treatment, the next $35B will be authorized using exactly the mechanism S1·06 documented for Vogtle.
Federal · 2026 reauthorizations
Energy Star · DOE standards
EPA Energy Star for data centers and DOE's Better Buildings Initiative are both up for reauthorization. Either could become a vehicle for mandatory facility-level disclosure — or could remain voluntary in perpetuity.